Green Jacket, Red Sleeves
by LunarMothim
Summary: Two secrets: Danny's mysterious injury and Phantom's bizarre ectosignature. In her quest to find the answers to both, Maddie finds out more than she could ever have anticipated. Revelation fic, no PP
1. Green Jacket

Yet again, on a blisteringly hot summer day, Danny was about to go out in a jacket.

"Sweetie," Maddie began in as innocent a tone as she could, and she immediately saw Danny freeze, his shoulders tensing under the thick green material. "It's going to be really hot out today. Maybe you should leave the jacket…?"

Danny turned a sheepish smile on his mother. She'd come to recognize it lately – it meant he was about to lie. "I'll take it off if I get hot but Sam's driving, and you know how cold she keeps her car."

Maddie forced herself to smile and say "Alright dear, have fun", but once he was out the door her shoulders dropped and the smile fell away. It had been going on for almost four years now. All the lies, the disciplinary actions at school, the slipping grades… he hadn't been able to keep a job for more than a month because he kept messing shifts, and she and Jack never got satisfactory answers for anything. It was only through Jazz's impeccable tutoring that Danny had passed his senior year, and was able to make it into a decent college nearby. Even still Danny had talked about postponing college for a year, but again, never gave a good excuse.

He himself had changed. Along with the normal course of puberty, which granted Danny a height of six foot two, he had begun to bulk up with muscle. She had no idea where it was coming from, so she began to attribute some of Danny's absence as gym training. It was the only way to account for the muscles on her otherwise placid son.

She despondently tweaked at the device in her hands – it was yet another method for tracking ghosts but it was dysfunctional and always tracked Danny on its little grid. Maddie had disassembled and reassembled it time and time again but found nothing wrong with it, and she assumed that by the end of the day she would give up and start from scratch.

The rest of the day, Maddie remained in the lab, even when the news came on with a segment about Phantom and another ghost fighting downtown. It was over before her interest could be aroused, so she had returned to her Locator. Jazz wasn't going to return home for the weekend because of a test and Jack was attending a meeting with the G.I.W., leaving just Maddie and Danny. She'd asked him if he wanted to do something that weekend and he'd given her that lying smile and said sure, if nothing came up. She'd suggested the pool. He had unconsciously clutched his sweater sleeve and said he didn't like the pool. In the end she let it go, saying they'd make it up as they went, and Danny had smiled and gone up to his room.

Maddie had just finished with her seventh reassembly of the ghost tracker when she heard a clatter from upstairs. She checked her watch, which told her it was ten till seven. Danny never got back that early. She hurriedly booted up the device and sure enough, the little ghost graphic popped up on the grid, exactly on top of her coordinates.

Armed with as inconspicuous a gun as she could reach Maddie crept up the stairs, gun cocked and finger on the trigger. The noise had come from the kitchen, which was where the Ecto-Locator was targeting the ghost. She heard drawers being slammed, a chair scraping, and a rustling sound. From one of her belt pouches Maddie produced a compact, flicking it open and poking it around the corner of the hall. Her frame relaxed instantly when she saw Danny's shock of black hair seated at the kitchen table. Damn Locator still didn't work. It was the point of the night for her to give up on it. She padded around the corner, turning the device off and holstering the gun.

"You're back early," she greeted brightly.

Danny started up with a jolt, hitting his shins on the edge of the table. "M-mom," he stammered, his blue eyes wide with fear. Yes, it was the first thing Maddie saw on his face – fear. She had no idea why until she looked down at his exposed arm, which he was trying to roll a sleeve over. "I-I thought you were getting groceries."

If the sight of his arm hadn't been so unsettling Maddie would've reminded him that she went to the store just two days ago. As it was, however, she could not bring herself to say anything. He had rolled the sleeve down but she had seen his arm and he knew she had. He didn't move from his spot, standing before the table and picking anxiously at the end of his sleeve. The Fenton First Aid Kit was open on the table before him, and she had seen why.

She'd seen a lighter green on his arm than the shade of his jacket, but what stood out the most was the _red_. He had a long gash length-wise down his forearm, and even then she could see it was only half-exposed, a long strip of gauze wound a few times around his elbow. The green sleeve was starting to turn a sickly brown, and Maddie awoke from her shocked stupor.

"Danny," she said in a breathless tone, walking quickly towards him.

He flinched away from her.

She stopped again with her arms outstretched for him, a chilling hurt stabbing through her chest. He still looked frightened. Frightened because he had been caught? With difficulty she allowed her cold scientist side to usurp her motherly side. "Danny let me help you," she implored in a stronger tone.

This did nothing to stop him from staring at her but he did not move, so she approached him and pulled the sleeve up. It was worse than she had seen from across the room but luckily it wasn't deep. "Daniel you need to wash this out before wrapping it," she scolded, but her voice wavered.

"I know," he replied in a very small voice, his eyes now looking away from her. "I was just using the gauze as a tourniquet."

She took a steadying breath and put a gentle hand on his other shoulder, leading him to the sink. She turned the faucet on and he stuck his arm under it, not even wincing as the water stripped the blood away. Danny had made an effective tourniquet. The wound wasn't bleeding very much. She didn't think it would require stitches.

"We need to take the jacket off," she told him, and she felt those alarming muscles tense under her hand. "No excuses," she added quickly.

He unzipped the front of the jacket and slipped one arm out, winding it back around his hand and dabbing at his injury to dry it. With his mother's help he stretched the other armhole wider and carefully shimmied it over the injury. The jacket was dumped unceremoniously into the sink as Maddie led Danny back to the kitchen table to sit. She swiped alcohol pads around it and Danny didn't so much as twitch. When he was just a little boy, falling off his bike or tripping over a crack in the sidewalk, he had pleaded with his mother not to use the alcoholic wipes because it stung. "It's okay now!" he'd say after she'd look at the scraped knee or elbow. "You don't need to touch it, it's better now! Just a Band-Aid!"

But now, having long-since left his childhood behind (farther behind than she could imagine), he sat rigid in his chair as she disinfected the wound. Perhaps more out of curiosity than need she dribbled a little hydrogen peroxide over it. Again no reaction from her son, as if he didn't even feel the nettling foam. He was staring with a horrible intensity at the table. After what seemed to be an eternity she finished wrapping the gauze around his cut, red barely pluming over the surface now. Perhaps she had been wrong about it being that bad of a cut, but all that blood….

She got up off her knees and settled down into the chair beside him, resting her forearms on her thighs and remaining in cold, calculating silence. He refused to move or even look away from the table. He had been wearing a white tank top under the jacket and it was covered in sweat. His arms-

His arms were peppered with scars and bruises, and she could see that they continued under his shirt. There were bruises in multiple stages of healing and scars of all sizes. There were marks she could only conclude were burns. A few extremely faint, jagged white lines marched along his left bicep, marks she could only assume came from amateur stitching. There was, in fact, a cut stitched up on his right shoulder. She had never heard of him going to a doctor any time recently, and then it all hit her like a brick wall. Her son, her son-

"I could've taken care if it myself."

She didn't know what to say. Had it been him that made those uneven stitches? Could her boy, possibly a few years younger, have had to stitch himself up all alone? But why?

"Aren't you going to say something?" he rasped, still looking at the table. Angry – he sounded angry.

"What good is there in saying anything?" she replied in a similar tone. She tried to revert to her usual maternal scolding but she couldn't quite reach it. "You won't tell me the truth."

This, at the very least, drew his attention. His gaze flicked over to hers quickly and she could really see the bags under his eyes. He looked so tired. So much older.

Then he frowned and looked down at his arm, flexing it a little. "So you really aren't going to tell me?" she asked. He didn't look up at her this time.

"Do I have to?"

"Daniel."

"Mom." His voice broke and he cleared his throat. "I… I can't. You wouldn't understand."

"Isn't that a little unfair to me, Daniel?" He chanced another glance up at her but she had no idea what expression she was wearing. She could feel tears welling up, however. "You won't even give me the opportunity to try and understand? What gives you the power to decide for me whether or not I care that my son looks like he's been dragged behind a truck?"

At this the corner of his mouth flickered up in a weak smile. It reminded her of that smile he gave her when he lied, a smile that told her she knew nothing. "I never said you didn't care," he reminded her.

"Daniel, please," she whimpered, losing all control over her tone. "All these lies, your grades, staying out until morning, these injuries… you can't expect me to sit idly by like this and let you do this to yourself. I deserve an explanation. I am your mother and I love you."

At this he lost all good humor in his expression. "Mom, don't do this to me."

She did not respond. She sat completely still and stared at him, her hands balled into fists on her knees.

He looked around him with that same frightened expression she had seen when she caught him in the kitchen. "Tomorrow," he said faintly, rubbing the back of his neck and refusing to meet her gaze. "I'll… I'll tell you tomorrow. Just… give me tonight, okay? …Please?"

It was the closest she had gotten in four years to the truth so the "Alright" passed effortlessly from her lips. He bolted up out of the chair and up the stairs to his room. She knew he would be gone soon. He always managed to sneak out, even from the second story. But she trusted him, despite all the reasons not to. She would wait until tomorrow. Somehow, she would wait.

**AN:** Hello I am Luna, this is my first fanfiction! I haven't seen Danny Phantom in a while so I hope nothing is too ooc. Any differences can be attributed to the in-universe 3-year gap between the show and this story. This story will have a minimum of 3 chapters.

Edit: Thank you to the guest reviewer who pointed out Danny's height. I assumed he would be very tall because of Jack so I made him as tall as I thought Jack was, without thinking that his shorter mother's genes would have an impact. I have scaled him down to six foot two which is hopefully not too tall still.


	2. Red Sleeves

The jacket lay in the sink. After she repacked the first aid kit and replaced it in the cupboard she turned her attention to it. She wasn't sure entirely what to do but throwing it out seemed like a reasonable option. She lifted it up from the sink, the one sleeve still dark with red blood. As she removed it completely she shook it out a little in preparation for disposal.

That's when she saw it. The green that she had completely forgotten about on his arm. It had washed off his skin but the stain still remained on the inside of the sleeve. As Amity Park's leading ghost expert (besides her husband who bless his heart was due to call around nine, and she had no idea what to say to him) she knew exactly what it is without any need for analysis. It was ectoplasm. Perhaps this was what the Ecto-Locator was honing in on, Maddie thought. She shook the jacket even more gingerly, trying to keep the ectoplasm on, and carried the jacket down to the lab. She hadn't expected to spend this much of her day in the lab but then again, what else was she planning on doing? Groceries were done and her son was out who-knew-where getting his arm sliced open God-knew-how. She was sure the cut had looked deep before she approached him.

With a pipette she extracted the ectoplasm from the jacket's fibers and put it on a microscope plate. Surely this would help her, at least. Ectoplasm anywhere near Danny baffled her, let alone having it on his arm beside a wound – could he have been fighting ghosts? After all this time, laughing at the mere suggestion of him hunting ghosts alongside her and Jack, had he really been doing it behind their back? But even if he had, how had he been getting those injuries when she and Jack received none?

She brought the sample into focus on low magnification. Ectoplasm was a very homogenous substance but all the same, it gave some indication of what level ghost it came from. The more solid, the more powerful. It wasn't much as far as answers went but it was a start; perhaps something in it could help identify which ghost it had come from. At that point, she was grasping at anything she could reach.

This sample was a very big clue, evidently. There was no mistaking a sample of ectoplasm this distinct. It belonged to Phantom.

Jack and Maddie had captured Phantom their fair share of times, but each time he'd managed to escape. During these brief successes they had managed at least twice to knick him with a weapon and extract ectoplasm. The first time they threw the sample out, assuming it had somehow been tainted. The second time there was no question about it, Phantom's ectoplasm was different. Maddie did not dare go so far as to say he had DNA but that was certainly what it looked like; crystalline strands of DNA, almost impossible to see.

The Fentons worked laboriously for days trying to get to the bottom of this impossibility, but the giant ghost dog trashed the lab on the fourth day and any samples they had were tainted. So, Maddie thought, her trembling hands turning the dials on the microscope, her son had been in contact with Phantom. If he was the one behind her son's injuries, that blew the ghost boy's hero persona straight out of the water. Maddie clutched the dials of the microscope hard, trying to keep herself from gearing up right then and hunting down Phantom. No, she had this sample to focus on. She turned the dials again and sure enough, she could see the little wisps of what couldn't be DNA. She was a scientist but her subject of study did not generally involve genetic material, so she couldn't tell for certain either way.

Genetic material, she thought again. There was simply no way. No possible way. Ghosts were merely electronic echoes of people who had died, nothing physical of them was retained – their forms were conceived based off of the memories or self-image of the ghost. This electronic energy held ectoplasm together, a malleable and simple material that was not alive, could not reproduce. There was no way for a ghost to have genes.

It was perhaps these strange strands of… whatever that gave Phantom's ectoplasm its density. Maddie shifted in her seat and her gun holster rocked against her hip. It was a new invention, one she and Jack had finished not long before the convention. It was a modified Taser, one that worked against the flow of a ghost's electric energy and disrupted their form. In mild amounts it merely disoriented ghosts, but with a high enough voltage it completely disintegrated them. This gave Maddie an idea.

Maddie dug through the bin on the far side of the lab where they stored their prototypes. This gun only had one prototype and it wasn't too far from the current version but it hadn't able to get to a high enough voltage because of the type of wire and size, so Jack had insisted they make it bigger and better. The byproduct of that decision was strapped to her waist. She removed the blast doors on the prototype and detached the probes from the cartridge, yanking the wires out and stripping the casing off the probe ends. She rewired the inside so that it activated, albeit at a very low level. She tapped the wires together and earned a tiny pink spark and, thus satisfied, she ran this current through the sample.

The ectoplasm seemed almost to flash white at the contact, but the reaction lasted for a split second before it was over. Nothing had changed, so Maddie cranked up the power. It may not have been a powerful enough tool to utilize in battle but here in laboratory settings with such a small sample, it surely would suffice.

The white flash lasted longer the more power she put into the charge. She was surprised the tiny sample was so resistant, but no matter how stable it was she knew that it would work. She cranked the voltage two notches and this time felt a satisfactory jerk in the wires when they entered the ectoplasm. She slid her goggles off from her eyes once the considerable flash had subsided. Her fingers froze on the goggles and her jaw set with a snap.

The ectoplasm had changed from green to red.

Dissolving would have been an acceptable reaction. Dissipating, perhaps even rising up and attacking her, like a scene from that John Carpenter movie, would have been an acceptable reaction.

This reaction she could not begin to comprehend and she had to clap a hand over her mouth from throwing up or screaming.

It looked like blood, dear God, it _looked like blood_.

She forcibly regained herself and put the slide back under the microscope. She was a woman of science, and science was not forged by women who stood around and screamed – that was for the movies. Her hand was even shakier on the dial but she focused it on the sample again. She hardly studied human blood in her field of work but with what little experience she had from college, she could assume with some certainty that this was, in fact, blood. Somehow she had melted down Phantom's ectoplasm into blood. Real, human blood.

No theory she could begin to imagine, no matter how ridiculous, made an inkling of sense with this evidence. She had almost completely forgotten about Danny in all this. Danny would wait until morning, she knew – but Phantom she could deal with tonight, because there was no way in Hell she would be able to sleep.

The first thing she did was check on Danny. As she had expected, he was not in his room. At first when it all began, she and Jack had suspected it was about Sam. Towards the end of freshman year they had begun dating and Maddie started to notice his absence at night. It explained why he was so tired in class all the time. If it weren't for Sam herself Maddie would have forced her son to stop seeing her, but she knew how happy Sam made him. His effervescence had begun to die out his first year of high school but when he was with her, he was so animated and alive, more like his old self. The best she could do was to leave a package of condoms on his bed one day while he was at school. Danny never mentioned them to her but she found the box under his bed a few days later, unopened. She wasn't sure what to make of it but Danny seemed a little more relaxed for a few weeks after that so she didn't think much of it.

She stood in his room now looking out the window. From there she could see the park, where she and Jack encountered Phantom most often. He didn't have one particular haunt so the task of actively finding the elusive ghost when no other ghosts were active daunted her. She did, however, have the Ecto-Locator, which she now knew could track Phantom's ectoplasmic signature. She had questions for Phantom, but the most pressing ones involved Danny. Somehow, this ghost was involved, and if Danny planned on lying to her again that morning, she needed some evidence for herself.

The night was warm and muggy as she stepped out of Fentonworks. Maddie decided to go on foot. With the Ecto-Locator in her hands and the Fenton Taser in her holster, she set off in search for answers.

**AN:** Hello everyone! I was very nervous about posting this story but I was pleasantly surprised by the response! Thank you to everyone for reviewing, each review made me so very happy! :) As always if you see any mistakes or things to be improved upon, please message me so I can fix it or work on it in the future. There may be two more chapters instead of just one.


	3. Green Sleeves

Luckily for Maddie, Phantom was out and about. She wasn't sure where he went when there was no ghost activity but all that mattered was where he was at that moment. At first he was moving very quickly, probably flying about, so she decided there was no catching him and settled for just keeping him on the grid. She was getting exhausted quickly trying to keep up.

It was past nine now, no doubt Jack had tried to call. In her haste she'd forgotten to contact him at all but she had no idea what she'd say to him anyway. It was best not to involve Jack in this – while Danny was as close to his father as an eighteen-year-old boy was expected to be, this was something a mother was expected to handle. He may look more like his father, even inheriting his impressive height give or take an inch, but he was more his mother's son in personality. Sure she was harsh when it came to ghosts, but when it came to her son there was no difference between her and any other mom. She loved her children more than anything and if hunting down this ghost was the way to protect her son, it was a small price to pay. This was one rare occurrence when the two halves of her had to combine, and she was having difficulty sorting her feelings out. She tried to squash the mothering side again as this would no doubt obstruct her hunt for Phantom.

Phantom was aimlessly meandering now, flying slower. She was beginning to regret not taking a vehicle as her leg muscles began to cry in protest. Then again, no vehicle she owned was inconspicuous enough for tracking; with any other ghost it would have been fine because she wouldn't need the same element of surprise as she did with Phantom, but he was cleverer than any ghost she'd encountered.

Do this for Danny, she told her legs, and this gave her the ability to keep on. The little cartoon ghost teetered on the far edge of the grid, flickering as he went in and out of range, before finally remaining stationary. She was approaching the park, as she had half-expected. Latching onto the opportunity, Maddie hustled into the trees, Locator in one hand and Taser in the other.

The tracker led her into the center of the park. As she padded quietly across the grass she went over tactics – should she go for a surprise attack and try and pin him down with the gun as leverage? Or should she announce herself to avoid startling him into fleeing or attacking?

It didn't matter. She looked up with a shiver and found him floating up in the trees, looking down at her.

Glowing green eyes stared intently from a low branch. He wasn't sitting on the branch, instead just hovering over it, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms folded around them. His white aura swirled lazily about him, bouncing off the trees that she could partially see through him. But his eyes were the worst. It was unsettling to see just two globes of intense green light peering down at her.

"I'd say this was a surprise," he started in a dry tone, "if I hadn't noticed you following me." Maddie made no sound as the ghost seemed to hop from his perch on the air and float down to the lowest branch of the tree, level with her eyes but still a reasonable distance away. "But still, you don't normally come out looking just for me. Should I be flattered?"

The good cheer he always kept about him was mysteriously absent. The snarky ghost was being as sarcastic as ever but his comments were normally light-hearted – now, with this tone, he was almost threatening.

She kept the gun pointed at him as she started to circle around closer to him. "I'm here for a talk, ghost," she muttered sternly, her eyes locked with his despite how difficult it was. "I'm not looking for a fight."

He tipped his gaze to the weapon and back to her face, raising his eyebrows in a very human expression of doubt. "I'm no politician but I'm pretty sure diplomatic discussions aren't done over the barrel of a gun."

"I don't have time for your sarcasm." Maddie's voice wavered a bit. "I want answers and if I get them, I'll leave you be."

"You'll get your answers better if you put that thing away." He tilted his head a bit as he looked at it again. "Oh, a new toy. Even more reason for you to holster it."

"It's just for insurance. There's no way for you to be disarmed so I might as well have something to defend myself with."

He snorted out a little laugh and gave her that smile again. Wait – no. He gave her Danny's smile, the one he always gave her when he kept something from her. The gun felt too heavy all of a sudden and her right arm sagged. With sudden clarity she could see Danny behind that face, as unearthly as it was. Even in his figure, which she had noticed had been changing over the years. She and Jack chalked it up to his form morphing as he became more accustomed to his ghostly existence, as many ghosts gradually changed to reflect and accommodate their fixations, but she could see the muscle definition stretching the black material of his jumpsuit. It was more than his physique, though, even his voice seemed different. It still had that bizarrely hollow sound all ghosts had, but his had begun lowering in pitch over the years. It was so gradual that she hadn't thought much of it, but now she realized it with a mix of shock and terror. It was almost as if he had _grown up_.

"Fair enough," he said, jolting her from her thoughts. He had once again sat down in the air but this time he was just in the air, not over a tree branch. "What's your first question?"

"Have you come into contact with my son earlier today?" she fired off at once.

He blinked. "Your son?"

"Daniel Fenton."

Phantom twitched at this and his smile faltered, but he caught himself and smirked again. "Oh, I know who you're talking about now, with the black hair, right?" Phantom waved one glowing hand over his white hair, as if to illustrate. "He was out with some chick downtown today when I was fighting Skulker."

"So you did see him?" she asked quietly. The scientist in her knew hearing this from a ghost, especially this one, shouldn't relieve her, but the mother in her was nearing her wit's end and any reassurance thrown at her seemed good.

"Yes, that's what I just said," he replied slowly, his body now more relaxed. "Now that you mention it, I think he got hit by one of Skulker's weapons. It was a harpoon thing. I tried catching it but it nicked me in the hand real bad and flew off behind me." He mimed this action just as he had the last one, pointing one finger sharply at his palm and then jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I think I saw him later on with a big cut on his arm. His girlfriend was trying to get him in the car."

Maddie looked down at the ground, her mind turning in circles. Ghost or not, Phantom had provided what seemed to be a reasonable excuse, and what cause had he to lie about it? Unless, of course, he was the one attacking Danny, but she would've heard that on the news. If Danny's story about the injury matched with Phantom's, that would explain the ectoplasm. If Phantom had been lying to her, she would have him in captivity anyway. Then, perhaps, she could be a little less civil with her dissections.

Thus reassured, she lifted the gun up to Phantom again with renewed vigor. He had raised himself to his full height, which seemed more impressive as he floated nearly three feet over the grass. "Oh, I thought that was it," he sighed, settling back down in mid-air.

"You answered a question about my son," she said with the confidence she normally had with Phantom, "but now it's time to answer a question about you."

"Well, I like long walks on the beach and I'm a Leo," he offered with a grin. She pointed the gun directly between his eyes and the grin sobered.

"The sample of ectoplasm I recovered from that attack," she began, chancing a step forward. Phantom watched this move intently but did not flinch. "I analyzed it in my lab. You have… inconsistencies."

"Is that a disease?" he asked, his goofy grin melting into a smirk. She was getting tired of his smarmy attitude very quickly.

"It turned into blood."

She was very satisfied to see the humor drain from his face instantly. He had originally been floating up and down slightly but even this stilled. "Well, you're the scientist," he replied in his same light-hearted tone, but his face still retained the shocked expression. A little afraid, even. Again she could see Danny in the expression, the way he'd looked at her when she found him with the gash in his arm. "What's your theory?"

"I have none," she replied honestly, continuing towards him. He drifted back a little. "By all the research I've ever compiled, it shouldn't be possible. If I had any clue I wouldn't be coming to you for answers, now would I?"

She could see him struggling for an answer, the muscles in his jaw seeming to work nervously. Her mind tried to write this off as impossible as ghosts had no muscles, but she had just seen ectoplasm transform into blood that night so anything seemed possible to her then.

"Alright, so I might've been overshadowing a guy," he said with the same casual tone and panicky expression. He brought one hand to the back of his neck, a gesture Danny often accompanied his more ridiculous lies with. "I guess that's what happens-"

"That's not what happens," Maddie interrupted, taking another step. He didn't move but his horrible glowing eyes followed the gun. "When a human is overshadowed, nothing about their physiology is changed."

Phantom kept glancing between her and the gun, clearly analyzing whether or not he could escape. Her goggles would still pick him up if he tried turning invisible so any advantages he had were cut down.

His poisonous green eyes seemed to mist over and dull. She was again impressed by his ability to mimic human expressions, because if he were a human he would certainly look defeated. "You said I could have tonight," he whispered in a tone that almost sounded hurt, and turned invisible.

Maddie fired.

She had moved close enough to him that the wires could reach – granted, the wires were long in the first place or else it would make tethering a flying creature very difficult. There was a surprisingly solid contact as the probes sunk into Phantom's chest. She had the voltage up to the second-highest level it could reach, stopping just before complete dissolution. With a structure as unnaturally dense as Phantom's, it would probably achieve the same effect as the level below it would on a normal ghost, which was to disrupt its signature and weaken it into an almost unconscious state. Once he was knocked out she planned on capturing him in a Fenton Thermos and taking him back to the lab for more extensive and controlled tests and questions. The gun was very nearly ripped from her hands as Phantom tried to fly away so Maddie hit the electrical trigger, activating the spark.

Immediately the gun vibrated in her grip and Phantom began crying out, which he did even though he could not feel pain. Then again, on one occasion where she and Jack had captured Phantom he had told them he had died from electrocution. Being electrocuted like this would bring back sour memories, if he had any feelings at all.

Maddie hadn't battle-tested the gun yet but she was adjusted enough to it from lab work, holding it tightly as the lighting arched from the device and into Phantom. She pleaded silently that it would work or else she might not get the opportunity again. The gun stilled in her clenched fists. Phantom floated back a bit into the trees and fell out of view.

Before he could disappear from her sight he erupted into the same white light she'd seen emit from the ectoplasm. For a horrified moment she wondered if he would dissolve into a puddle of blood, and the gun fell from her hands. It was dragged along into the trees for a few feet before Maddie heard a reassuringly solid thud from Phantom's direction, and the light vanished. Not just that light, though, but the light of his aura. She was again afraid that she'd miscalculated somehow and ended up dissolving him, so she raced towards the spot Phantom had landed.

She could faintly see the white of his hair stirring near the ground, no longer glowing. But then the figure fell backwards and she knew it wasn't his hair – it was a white t-shirt. Another burst of white light and suddenly Phantom illuminated the area around him. She saw him raise one gloved hand to the wires and pull the probes out with a grunt, then the white light again and he flickered out. His shaking hand dropped the wires and he stared down at it, flexing his hand open and closed. He flickered back on and off a few times like a light short-circuiting and the atmosphere around him likewise was fluxuating between normal and that hideous, dead cold ghosts gave off. He was lit up one moment and then dim the next. He tried to sit back up, his head lolling to the side. Maddie stalked closer, the Fenton Thermos held before her like a weapon. So she had miscalculated, but not in the way she had previously thought. He wasn't even unconscious.

He finally seemed to register her presence and his eyes snapped up to watch her as he tried to push himself away.

It wasn't Phantom anymore, this was the very least she could tell. The lights in the park were very poor and her tinted goggles did not help the situation. She slid them back off her face and onto her head and just as she did the white light kicked up again, illuminating the person on the ground for a split second that lasted far too long.

The same fear was on his face as when she had found him in the kitchen. His eyes were wide and glassy and just as blue as his father's.

Danny was lying on the floor for one brief moment. Then, a flash of white light, and Phantom stared up at her with the same horrified expression in his glowing green eyes.

Phantom vanished. Maddie was too stunned to immediately pull her goggles back over her eyes, and when she did he was gone. The Ecto-Locator showed Phantom disappearing off the edge of the grid, then nothing. She stood alone in the forest mulling over what Phantom said. "You said I could have tonight," she echoed into the palm pressed against her lips.

**AN:** Thank you to everyone who has been writing reviews! Hearing what you all had to say really inspired me to keep going. I hope you all will enjoy the last chapter whenever it comes out. If there are enough people who want me to try writing this again from Danny's perspective, I will attempt it. For now, though, hold on for one last chapter.


	4. Purple Night - Bonus

Danny flew as far and fast as he could but this wasn't very high or far as he suddenly changed from Phantom back into Danny while still in the air. With courage he didn't know he had in him he refrained from screaming as he began to plummet, focusing his efforts on changing back, which he managed just above the ground. Too late to pull back up, he allowed himself to sink into the ground and remained there dejectedly, and only the realization that turning human while underground would probably kill him brought him back up above ground. He looked over his shoulder but his mother was not following him, whether he had lost her or she just wasn't following. Of course the first thing she would do was return home and check on her son –

But she'd already seen her son, Danny thought glumly, turning back to his human form and landing softly on the ground. His chest was aching fiercely and as he put a hand to the pain it came back green and red. "Merry Christmas in July," he told himself deliriously, stumbling further away from the park.

He was closest to Sam's house so that was where he set off to. Her house came into view, so familiar even in the dark from all the times he'd visited it over the years. Changing back to Phantom and hoping he'd stay that way long enough to get inside, Danny flew up to her bedroom window. The lights were off but she was seated at her desk, laptop open and illuminating her bored expression. Danny had to tap a few times before she jerked to attention, pulling out her headphones and spotting him.

She nodded to him and he phased through the window just in time to change back into Fenton. He landed on the edge of her bed and tumbled off onto the floor. He held his chest and groaned as the sudden action upset the wound, Sam already by his side and helping him up.

"You idiot," she hissed, "what the hell happened to you?"

He leaned against the edge of her bed and straightened up as best he could. Under any other circumstance he would've been laughing about his less-than-graceful entrance even with the gaping chest wounds, but his reason for being there sobered his sense of humor. "My mom," he said simply. "She found out."

Sam's eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "And… _she shot you_?"

"Reverse order. She shot me and then found out."

"Shirt off," she interrupted in a short way that meant for him to keep talking, pulling the medical kit out from under her bed. She and Tucker both had one – Tucker's parents had found his and he had to lie to cover up why he had one. Luckily no one had found Sam's yet, and he came to her house more frequently than Tuck's if he couldn't go back to his.

He pulled the tank top over his head. "Why Sam, a shirtless man on your bed, what will the neighbors think?" he quipped in a desperate bid for humor.

Sam smirked a little. "Downtown Abbey can think whatever it's always thought," she replied, wielding a roll of gauze. "Now tell me what happened."

As she wrapped the gauze around his chest he began to relay the day's events, starting with the aftermath of his battle with Skulker. Truthfully, Sam had been there, but it wasn't a date so much as it was a patrol. "I went home after dealing with Skulker," he began, taking a ragged breath as Sam tightened the gauze wrapping. "I thought my mom wasn't there. I totally forgot my dad took the RV so I didn't see it parked outside and I just thought she'd gone out. I was outta gauze so I went to get some from the Fenton First Aid kit downstairs and she caught me trying to patch myself up."

Sam tied the wrapping closed and sat on the bed before him, her splayed legs resting against his folded ones. "And then?" she prompted, taking his hands in hers.

Danny sighed. "Well, when she tried to talk to me about it and all the sh- stuff I'd been getting into since freshman year. I told her I'd tell her everything in the morning. I was gonna spend the night thinking up some kinda lie to tell her."

"Drug cartel?" Sam suggested with a weak smile, which Danny returned.

"That was my first idea. But then there was another ghost attack out by the park. Just a few ectopusses, nothing big, but once I was out I decided to just stay out. Fly around for a bit, try to clear my mind. Then I saw my mom following me. I tried my best to, y'know, shake her off my tail, but she wasn't giving up so I decided to try and talk to her just to see what she wanted."

"Is that when she…?" Sam muttered, putting a hand over the bandages.

"At first she said she actually wanted to _talk_ but I should've known better from my mom. She asked me if Phantom had anything to do with Danny Fenton."

Sam snorted a soft laugh. "And you said?"

"I said he just got hit by shrapnel during the Skulker fight. She bought it, too, which also surprised me…." Danny broke off pensively and muttered, "The gun."

"What about the gun?" Sam prompted.

"That's how – my mom said she had a sample of my blood, or, Phantom's ectoplasm, and it turned into blood. It must've been the gun she had. The voltage was probably counteractive to my electrical makeup." He took in a breath and nodded. "Well, she shot me with a tazer thing. Hence the…" He gestured to his bandages which were starting to show blood through them. "And I guess it short-circuited my ghost form and I changed back right in front of her."

"Then?"

"Then nothing. I ended up here." Sam didn't look too distressed as their eyes met.

"Well… now she knows. Or at least, she has an idea."

"Sam-"

"So maybe now it's time to just tell her everything?" Sam whispered as loudly as she could without alerting her parents. "I mean, for God's sake, Danny, every other time you've told them before you wiped their memories or whatever, they were fine –"

"Sure, for the few seconds it lasted," he retorted. "Given enough time, they would've gotten curious. They'd want to do tests, experiments-"

But Sam was already rolling her eyes so he said her name sharply. "Danny, they are your parents, and you're their son first and foremost. Obviously your mom cares about you and wants to help, so if you don't want her to do tests and experiments and stuff, she won't."

"It's easy for you and Tucker to believe because you've been there since the beginning. But my mom and dad?" He paused to rub his chest which was starting to ache more. "Hey, mom," he said in a mockingly bright tone, "y'know that ghost boy you hate and want to rip apart molecule by molecule? That's me! I'm a biological impossibility and a first for science as we know it! I've been skipping school and sleep to hunt ghosts behind your back and I'm a ghost too! But you can't do any tests-"

"Danny," Sam cut in, then sighed and closed her eyes. His temper dimmed a bit and after a brief pause she looked back up into his eyes. "She knows part of it now. It's best to just fill her in on everything she doesn't know still, to reassure her that you're still you. I'm a hundred percent sure she'll understand. She's your _mom_, Danny, more than she is a ghost hunter or a scientist."

He forced a smile onto his face. "Alright, you win again," he breathed. "I'll tell her. But tomorrow."

"Fine," she said, glancing out the window. "What d'you plan on doing tonight, then?"

"Do you mind if I crash at your place?" Danny asked, his smile turning genuine and sheepish.

Sam tossed him a sly look. "Why Danny," she replied gossipingly, "a shirtless man in my bed? What will the neighbors think?"

**AN:** I won't be writing this story over from Danny's perspective (mostly because I have other ideas for stories now) so I decided to add this little fluffy mini-chapter right before the final one, which will be coming eventually. I hope you all find it satisfactory!


	5. White Light

It was mad for her to believe Danny would be back when she got home. If only he had been, she thought, stumbling into his empty bedroom. Perhaps that would make it easier to believe…

To believe what, exactly? That her son wasn't….

She collapsed onto his bed, which was made. He had probably made it that morning before he left. He never made his bed, she thought numbly, staring at her hands. Ever since he was young he would challenge her with "Why would I make the bed if I'm just gonna sleep in it again that night?" Back when he was a normal teenager. Back when he didn't lie. Back when he didn't miss class and stay out all night. She had seen all these changes in her son, praying it was a rebellious stage – but how far did these changes extend? That he was…

He was a ghost?

Her throat became dry. How could he… he wasn't dead, surely…? There was no way that she, a scientist and ghost expert, could explain this.

Phantom had appeared the same time as the Fenton portal opened, so she had assumed he had come through with all the other ghosts he combatted. This was three years ago. Three years ago, Danny's grades had begun to slip and he had begun to receive detentions. He had never gotten detention for anything he did on purpose in elementary or middle school, how could she just let his behavior continue like that? How could she have been so blind?

But blind to what? "Blind to what?" she asked herself hoarsely. What was… what was Danny?

No. Not Danny.

She clenched her fists so hard they turned cold. It wasn't Danny. It was Phantom. He had been tricking her somehow, that had to be it. It was a trick and she fell for it! She had been so put-off when she thought she saw her son that she hadn't reacted quickly enough to capture him and he'd flown off. How could she be so stupid! She'd worried her maternal instincts would get in the way that night, and certainly not this way, but she had allowed herself to slip and now she had nothing to show for the night. Nothing from Danny, nothing from Phantom.

"You said I could have tonight," he'd muttered, looking hurt.

She shook her head and massaged her temples with cool gloved fingers. It was part of the farce. Phantom must have been nearby when she was talking to Danny. He had managed to get around ghost shields in the past somehow, so it wasn't too far off to say he could've been in their house.

But his eyes. And his body. His hair. His mannerisms. She could see Phantom rubbing the back of his neck as easily as she could see Danny doing the same, saying, "Sorry, I lost track of time."

Another trick. Perhaps as time went on he had molded himself after Danny. Maybe this was his plan all along – to play off their human emotions by disguising himself to look like their son. God knew it had worked on her tonight. He was probably speeding along back to where ever it was he stayed in his spare time, laughing about how he'd pulled such a fast one on Maddie Fenton. She gritted her teeth and got up off of Danny's bed. If he knew so much about Danny, then it meant Phantom was around him more than she'd thought.

Danny.

Phantom be damned, her main priority was Danny. He was still gone. She checked the glowing red numbers of his alarm clock and saw it was only 10:21. She considered calling Jack after all just to say hello, but he would be home tomorrow night and she could share everything with him then. As she walked out of Danny's room her heart felt too heavy for her to speak if she had called him. Jack would wait until later. She had to worry about Danny now.

No door slammed that night as she lay awake in bed, and she knew she had been awake for hours. Everything was buzzing around in her head, congesting her brain and drilling a migraine into her temples. Danny. Phantom. The two may or may not have been connected but even this bizarre relation aside she had issues with both of them. Danny most of all. Her beloved little boy whom she'd raised since infancy and seen grow into a troubled young man, was in more trouble than she had dreamed. Perhaps it was because of Jazz setting such a high standard – if Jazz could turn out to be such an upstanding citizen and student, surely Danny would eventually swing back around and follow suit after this brief rocky period. He had been like her as a young child but Danny was a more even mix of his parents whereas Jazz was nearly a carbon copy of her mother. With Jazz it had been so easy to relate, but with Danny's teenage years it was always a bit of a struggle to connect. There was a whole other side of him that came from his father that she could never relate to, not in the way Danny wanted her to. She had done what she thought was her best to understand him, though, and when he started spouting these lies about his behavior she assumed it was a delaying mechanism of sorts and that he would eventually snap out of it and things would return to normal.

That wasn't right, though. It's not that she didn't feel she had to intervene, it was that she'd been afraid to, as if putting more stress on him would cause him to crack completely like a piece of chinaware, and so delved into ghost hunting to distract herself. She had tried to focus only of the positives as many online forums had suggested; when he managed a good grade on a test, the few times a month he came back before curfew (which were most often the nights where he vanished after "going to bed"), and especially the nights where he was actually home, the dinners they'd shared as a family and the nights spent gathered around the television. Lulling herself into a false sense of security was all it was. She was nitpicking what she wanted to see and selfishly pushing away the rest, opting instead to spend time in the lab working on inventions.

Around three in the morning she heard a sound from out in the kitchen. Maddie had bolted upright off her pillow but stopped herself from leaving her room.

"You said I could have tonight." Yes. In her bleary mind she could hear Danny saying this with his green eyes wounded and glowing. No, _Phantom_ had said that and she'd promised that ghost nothing! But her son had indeed asked for the night and if a few more sleepless hours was all it took for her to finally learn the truth, she would brave them. She settled back down against a bed that had never felt so large and uninviting.

Her eyes could not have been closed for more than ten minutes before Maddie awoke to the sunlight beaming in through her window. She checked the clock and sure enough it was bordering on eight in the morning. She had slept five hours but she felt like it really had just been those ten minutes.

Rising wearily from her bed Maddie opted not to wear the hazmat suit she normally wore. There was no scientist that day, just a mother. She was contritely aware of how strange her khaki pants and polo shirt felt - just how much time _did _she spend in the lab or out on the field? She could wager it was far more than the time she spent with Danny, and that was half of the problem.

No, today was not about her. It wasn't even about Phantom, unless Danny made it. It was about Danny. She would sit and patiently listen to what he had to say, and then she would talk about what she could do to help him fix it.

She stepped into a pair of slippers and exited the master bedroom. The kitchen was empty, nothing left out on the table. It was earlier for a Sunday, especially for Danny, but she had half-expected him to be awake for such an occasion as today. She made her way up the stairs, her heart thrumming against her ribs. When she grabbed the handle of his bedroom door she was anticipating it just swing open, revealing an empty room yet again.

However, the knob didn't turn. It was locked.

"Danny?" she called softly.

There was noise from behind the door and her galloping heart steadied a bit. He was home. Even though he had said he'd be home that morning part of her feared he would never come back. "One second," came the muffled reply. A drawer opened but did not close. More scuffling. Then, a click as the lock was undone on the doorknob. Danny didn't say anything for a while so Maddie tested the knob. The door opened.

Either he had remade the bed that morning or he hadn't slept in it that night. Danny himself was perched on the swivel chair by his desk, one hand slung over his knees, the other kneading his chest. The posture reminded her of Phantom as he hovered in the tree last night but she quickly quashed the memory. No Phantom today, remember? she berated internally.

Maddie lighted on the edge of the bed, trying not to sit too rigidly and appear too distant. This was already uncomfortable enough for Danny, whatever it was he had to say.

He sat curled up on the chair almost too small for him and she recognized it as a defensive position. He was still afraid. But afraid of what? Surely he knew she'd never hurt him, no matter what the problem was.

"We're not doing this again, are we?" he asked with a weak attempt at a smile.

A few tense moments of silent contemplation had passed on her part before she realized he was waiting for her to start. "I'm… I'm just here to listen," she muttered. "Whatever it is that's been going on… you can just tell me."

His eyebrows furrowed a little, one hand still massaging his chest as if it ached. "But… I… last night-"

Danny shifted a little in his seat and winced, the hand he'd had to his chest now clutching the material. Maddie could see the little blossoms of red on the white shirt. When she had seen him upon entering the room she had assumed it was just his white shirt with the red circle but now she realized Danny had outgrown that shirt nearly two years ago. This shirt was white with two little spots of blood on the chest.

"Danny you're bleeding!" she said urgently, starting to get up.

Her son put a hand up to halt her and she froze, knees bent awkwardly as she stopped mid-rise. She sat back down as Danny finished adjusting his posture, curling one leg under him and wrapping his free arm around his propped leg. He continued to rub at his sternum where the blood stains rested.

"Yeah," he replied casually, but his smile was incredibly somber, "those spikes weren't very gentle." Spikes? She continued to stare at the blood stains. They weren't growing so he must not have been bleeding still. "Sa- uh, I took care of it, though. It's wrapped up. I guess I…" he trailed off, his weak smile faltering.

"I don't understand," she tried to say, but even she couldn't hear her own voice. He had two wounds in his chest where Phantom had pulled the Taser probes out. Yes, the probes for the Fenton Taser were larger than those on a normal Taser because ectoplasm was incredibly hard to hold onto. "I… I shot _Phantom_."

"You certainly did," he replied, his rueful grin returning. His blue eyes did not betray any emotion, however, none of the fear she had seen yesterday, none of anything. In fact, he looked… less tired. "But the injuries don't go away when I change back, as you've already seen."

"Change?"

Suddenly the room, which was dark because of the drawn curtains, illuminated with a flash of ethereal white light. She had become all-too-familiar with it last night so when it died down she had bolted to her feet in preparation.

Sure enough, Phantom was now curled up in the chair Danny had been in, kneading his chest in the same manner.

He lifted the now-gloved hand away from his chest. "See? It doesn't hurt so much anymore."

"I knew it was all a trick," she hissed, backing away from Phantom. The ghost's face fell in a good imitation of shock. "I don't know how you're doing it, but if you hurt Danny one more time-"

"Mom."

The threat died on her lips and her heart, fluttering at maddening speed, seemed to stop altogether. It was Danny's voice, no doubt about it, unearthly echo or not. He continued the motion he had started before, pulling the glove off his raised hand. With a little spurt of green light there was suddenly a small cut on Phantom's wrist, green ectoplasm seeping sluggishly out. Then another, larger, white flash and Danny was back. The green oozing out of the cut was replaced with the normal red of human blood, and it began to flow faster.

"The ectoplasm you found on my jacket. And – oh, crud," he said with a nervous laugh, pressing his hand to his wrist as the blood continued to flow. "Could you take the false back outta the drawer there and hand me some gauze?"

Maddie sat frozen for a moment staring at her son, whose smile began to falter. At last she rose as if on autopilot and took the few steps over to his dresser, a dresser she'd returned laundry to countless times. Sure enough the back of the drawer came out and she saw an arsenal of medical supplies that fiercely rivaled the Fenton first aid kit and perhaps some walk-in clinics.

"I got some more gauze of my own last night," he said conversationally as she pulled the roll out of the drawer. He was applying pressure to the cut – no, the _burn_ – on his wrist to quell the bleeding. "If I hadn't run out yesterday, I probably wouldn't have to show you all this. Three years and I get tripped up by not buying gauze. It's stupid, huh?"

He noticed her standing numbly before him and held his hand out for the gauze.

Maddie flinched back from his touch.

She hadn't meant to; it was all so sudden and she still had no idea what was going on, or if this thing sitting in Danny's room was even Danny…

But then she saw the crestfallen look steal over his face. He worked the muscle of his jaw just like Phantom – it was him biting the inside of his lip, she realized – and returned his uninjured hand to the wound.

Maddie dropped to her knees before him again and pulled a strip of gauze from the roll, winding it around her son's wrist. After it was tied he drew his hand back and tucked it between his chest and his leg, pulling his other leg out from under him and curling up again. She sat back down on the bed.

"What does this all mean?" she asked hoarsely. "Is Phantom… overshadowing you? This defies all symptoms I've-"

"Phantom's not real, mom," he replied, tilting his head and looking down. "There is no 'Phantom', there's just me."

She blinked heavily. "But you're not dead," she intoned, her pitch wavering a little on the last word.

His gaze flickered to hers briefly. "Not entirely."

"How is this even possible?" she asked, leaning towards him.

"Remember when the Fenton portal started working?" Danny returned. Of course Maddie did, though, it was one of the biggest achievements in her career – as Jack so eloquently put it, 'busting a hole into another dimension'. All her life's work had proven useful on that very day.

But she had no idea how it had started working.

She thought back to one of the times she and Jack had captured Phantom. She had asked, among many other things, if he could remember how he died. He'd said after some hesitation, 'Electrocution.' "Oh God, Danny, the portal-"

"Zapped me real good," he finished with a smile. How was he still smiling? How could he be okay with all of this? But then again, this had been going on for three years. She had let this go on for three years. "I was just taking a look inside of it. You know dad put the button on the inside, right?"

Maddie's mouth dropped open. Electrocution, he'd said. Danny had died. Danny had died.

"So you really are a ghost?" she breathed, pressing her hand to her mouth.

He shook his head immediately. "Not entirely. The other ghosts like to call me 'halfa'. Half a ghost, half a human. I've still got a body, which most ghosts don't last I checked."

"But you… turn into a ghost? Daniel, this isn't making any sense." Part of her was still struggling not believe any of this. It really didn't… it wasn't…

"I know. I'm not a scientist so I can't quite tell you how it works." He shrugged.

"Why didn't you tell me about this years ago?" she yelled incredulously. He flinched back and stared at her with wide eyes. "Danny, I could have helped you! What if this… what if all this is killing you?"

"It already did that half-way," he responded lightly. "But I'm fine."

"You're not fine, Danny, you're… half _dead_!" At this she stood up, her body shaking. "Let me help you, please!"

As she tried to take a step forward Danny's figure tensed and the wide blue eyes turned green and glowed. She stumbled to a halt.

"Help me? By ripping me apart molecule by molecule?" he shot back. "Mom, you're really wondering why I never told you? You even said it yourself, you thought it was a trick. That vacation we took three years ago, when I saw that ghost no one else could, you guys strapped me to a flight simulator and tried to 'spin the crazy outta me'. What did I expect would come from revealing I was half-ghost?"

And he was right. Even now, Maddie wanted nothing more than to run a few tests, and good intentions or not, she could see how dehumanizing it would make him feel. Had she captured him that night she probably would have dissec- run tests, even after he'd changed, thinking exactly what he said – that it was a trick. Maddie heaved in a strained breath. "I'm sorry, Danny," she replied quietly. "This is… a lot to take in. I just want to figure this out… to help you…"

"Then stop and listen to me. That's what you said you would do, right?" His eyes had gone back to blue for which she was grateful. She obediently sat back down on the bed.

The theories were uselessly knocking around in her head. She wanted nothing more than to help but in her mind, this involved tests. Was it for his good or the good of her curiosity, though?

"I had my reasons for not telling you," he began softly. "I _wanted_ to tell you, it would've made a lot of things easier. But… I knew you would want to _fix_ me." He gave her a pointed look. "I've tried myself, too. It…" he broke off and dropped his gaze from hers. "It never worked out. 'Phantom' is a part of who I am and I can't get rid of that. Ever since the accident, I've been able to do things only ghosts can do. Fly, for one. Intangibility, invisibility, the whole nine yards. You've fought against 'Phantom' so you know what I'm capable of." The corner of his mouth twitched up for a moment. "I used to wonder why someone like me had gotten stuck with all this power. I was just a dorky little kid in ninth grade who couldn't stand up to a quarterback, let alone all these ghosts. Then I realized it wasn't about that. It didn't matter who I was because the point was, I had these powers, and I had to use them to protect everybody. That's what the hero does, right?"

He looked over at her with a genuine smile.

"I'm the good guy," Phantom had always told them as they had shot at him. "I'm just trying to help." She had never believed him because of what she had thought –no, known – about ghosts, how they had no humanity left in them and were only filled with malice and destruction. But her son was no ghost. He was Danny.

"I've almost killed you," she started, but Danny interjected with a frown.

"No, Mom, I would never let you. I knew what I was doing. If I was ever really in danger, I would've told you who I was."

"But the things I've said to you, threatened you with-" she tried to say but again, Danny cut her off.

"You threatened _Phantom_. You thought he was a ghost, so I don't hold it against you. Mom, I forgive you." He took a slow breath, one steadying hand against his chest. "Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" she repeated with a relieved smile, dabbing preemptively at her eyes. "Sweetheart, I never blamed you! I gave you no reason to trust me with this secret. If I'd just spent a little less time with my head in the lab, if I'd just paid better attention…"

"I don't want anyone blaming anyone here, this is all out of our control." Still, he was smiling as wide as she'd ever seen him before.

"So all this… all these cuts, all this skipping class, you've been fighting ghosts," she ventured. He nodded. "I understand you wanted to help but why did you try to shoulder all this responsibility? You were just a kid. You had other responsibilities like schoolwork."

"Who else was going to?" he countered.

"Your father and I?" Maddie supplied. "That huntress girl? The Guys i-"

"Everyone you mentioned thinks all ghosts are evil," Danny cut in. "I've had the chance to be around ghosts in a way no one else has. I've gotten to know how they work and act and feel. Some ghosts aren't evil, mom. I'm not." He tensed up a bit after saying this.

"You're human, honey," she insisted. "You're not… all ghost. Ghosts-"

"Mom, didn't you hear what I said?" Maddie wanted to continue anyways but she remembered this was not about her. For God's sakes she found out her son was… a half-ghost and she was still going on about ghosts being evil? So she remained quiet. Danny looked at her warily before continuing. "When do you ever actually talk to ghosts? When have you encountered a ghost without holding an ectogun to it right off the bat?" He gave her a brief moment to reflect and no, she couldn't think of any instances. "I just want you to trust me from now on. About staying safe, about school, about ghosts. About me."

"After everything you've told me you just want me to let it be?" she asked incredulously. "Isn't there any way I can help you?"

"Everything's been fine so far-" Danny started, but Maddie cut him off firmly.

"Things have not! Your grades, for one. All the disciplinary actions, Danny, and you look so _tired_ all the time. Do you hunt ghosts at night instead of sleep?" Danny offered a sheepish smile in return. "You're trying to balance all this but you're still… it's hurting you."

"I just want everyone to be safe," he replied. "I can take the grades. I still graduated, after all. I can take not-sleeping, I've gotten used to it. The only thing I can't take is…" he broke off and his eyes fell to the floor for a moment. "I can't stand the idea of anyone getting hurt. I've seen a lot of it. More than I want to. And even if I never sleep again, or if I don't go to college, or anything, at least everyone's still alive."

Still alive? At his age, Danny should be worrying about getting into colleges, not the well-being of his friends and family. What kind of life was he really leading?

"Danny…" she tried to say, but could find nothing to say at all. He was dead-set on this, she could see it in his eyes. Three years of this Hell had changed him more than she could have imagined. His teachers had all said he lacked focus but they were wrong – he was just focused on something else, much bigger. "I do trust you," she said at last. "I'm sorry for everything."

The smile spread across his face slowly and he laughed, most likely out of relief. "I told you, you didn't do anything wrong!" He threw his arms around her and hugged her tightly, enough that she had to pull him away to breathe. Despite everything she found herself smiling as well.

"No, I did. Apparently I should've shot you three years ago just so you knew I was here for you," she said with a nervous laugh, resting her hands on his shoulders. "I'm here for you from now on. You and 'Phantom'. Just… no more secrets, please? You can trust me with anything, I hope you know."

"I know," he replied. "I ought to tell dad too, right?"

"It's only fair. I'll talk to him first but when he comes around we are discussing everything for the past three years, do you understand?" She tried her best to sound firm but the pure unbridled relief on his face made her smile, if not a little guiltily. Part of his stress had been keeping his secret from her and to see just how much happier he was now….

"I understand," he said, still beaming. "I love you, mom."

At last the tears that had been threatening fell from her eyes. She pulled Danny close again and didn't let go. "I love you too, Danny."

**AN:** And that's it for "Green Jacket, Red Sleeves"! I am sorry if I have disappointed anyone with any part of this story; I am not a writer and I only do it when I really want to, as was the case for this story. Happy Dannyversary and thank you all for reading and reviewing!

Until next time,

**Luna.**


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